In 1992, Bill Plympton made history by drawing an entire film on his own

Film: Rescued From Semi-Obscurity: In 1992, Bill Plympton made history by drawing an entire film on his own






Sometimes largely forgotten pieces of pop culture need to be dusted off and given a fresh look. Rescued From Semi-Obscurity does just that.
These days, independent creators have plenty of unlikely side roads to mainstream success. Like animator James Curran, who created his own animated opening-credits sequence for Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures Of Tintin, released it to the web, watched it go viral, and ended up with a job offer from Spielberg himself. Or E.L. James, who wrote a series of erotic Twilight fan-fiction pieces, then turned them into novels and self-published them as the 50 Shades Of Grey series, which sold so well as e-books that the brick-and-mortar publishing houses came sniffing around and put them into print.
But back in 1992, there were fewer opportunities for a wholly independent creator to get national attention. That never stopped DIY animation pioneer Bill Plympton, who in 1992 released ...

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1992: The year college rock died

Music: For Our Consideration: 1992: The year college rock died






Dave Markey’s 1992 documentary 1991: The Year Punk Broke captures Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, Nirvana, and other contemporaneous alt-rock and grunge bands touring Europe mere months before Nirvana’s second album, Nevermind, would come out and change the lives of nearly everyone in the film. Even Sonic Youth, which had been around for a decade by that point—and was already one of the alternative scene’s most respected and critically acclaimed bands—would make the leap from beloved cult act to semi-regular MTV rotation in the wake of Nevermind, during the years when major labels and radio programmers were throwing everybody with a flannel shirt and torn jeans onto the air to see who’d fly. This was the era when the Grammys added an “alternative music” category, and the hot new radio format was “modern rock.” Popular culture was thick with weirdoes.
And when the dust cleared, college ...

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Hollywood Walk of Fame Gets Its $4 Million-Plus Facelift

Hollywood Walk of Fame Gets Its $4 Million-Plus Facelift



In typical Hollywood fashion, the star-studded Walk of Fame is getting a three-phase facelift, one that is expected to be two-thirds finished by the year's end.

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Memories of the Sneakers Shoot

Click through and check the by line...


Memories of the Sneakers Shoot

I remember the day my agent called and told me he was sending me a new script. I had just landed several movies in a row, and agents believe in one thing more than luck—momentum. He wanted to keep it rolling.

In 1992 Arrested Development looked like the future of hip-hop, but the future had other plans

Music: Hip-Hop And You Do Stop: In 1992 Arrested Development looked like the future of hip-hop, but the future had other plans


Hip-Hop And You Do Stop is a series chronicling Nathan Rabin’s deep love for (and growing estrangement from) hip-hop through the filter of golden-age and ’90s hip-hop. Each entry documents a year in the genre’s development, beginning with 1988 and concluding with 2000.

1992 witnessed the release of a number of landmark albums. It was the year of Dr. Dre’s The Chronic but also of Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head, Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth’s Mecca And The Soul Brother, The Pharcyde’s Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde, Gang Starr’s Daily Operation, Eric B. & Rakim’s Don’t Sweat The Technique, Redman’s Whut? Thee Album, Ice Cube’s The Predator, and Common’s Can I Borrow A Dollar? That’s a whole lot of awesomeness for any single year, and that’s just in hip-hop.
So what incontrovertible masterpiece topped the prestigious Village Voice ...

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“I got a beep from Kim”: 24 pop-culture windows into the world of 1992

Inventory: “I got a beep from Kim”: 24 pop-culture windows into the world of 1992






1. Singles accidentally mythologizes Seattle just as the rest of the world became obsessed with itThough Nirvana’s Nevermind was released in 1991, it didn’t actually hit the top of the Billboard charts until January of 1992. The album’s ascendance also signaled the rise of grunge to national recognition, even though the style of music had been percolating in the Pacific Northwest since the mid-’80s. Though many albums of the era captured the scene’s sound, no movie captured—or attempted to capture, at least—the scene’s romantic foibles like Cameron Crowe’s Singles. Set in Seattle, grunge capital of the world, the movie interweaves the love lives of residents in an apartment building with the music of Mudhoney, Alice In Chains, and Soundgarden. (The faux-band in the movie, Citizen Dick, even features members of Pearl Jam.) Though the movie itself wasn’t a smash ...

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Paddling Pooches: Photos of 2012 Surf Dog Surf-A-Thon

Paddling Pooches: Photos of 2012 Surf Dog Surf-A-Thon

                   

Brave canines hit the waves at Del Mar's Dog Beach Sunday in the 2012 installment of the seventh annual Surf Dog Surf-A-Thon. Touted as the biggest dog surfing competition in the world, the event invites dogs to hang twenty, local dog lovers to hit the sand as cheerleaders and dog lovers from afar, like us, to be entertained by the action shots.

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Check out: Bad Lip Reading

Just fantastic!...


Check out: Bad Lip Reading

Bad Lip Reading is one of my favorite YouTube channels. Here’s their take on Twilight.

This is the first time I’ve seen them try to assemble a coherent narrative (of sorts) out of their re-dubs. Usually it’s silly non sequitur stuff like this hilarious Mitt Romney piece:

“I bought two zebras and tamed a parrot named Mr. Future.” I could watch this stuff all day.

Google Fiber Splits Along Kansas City's Digital Divide

Google Fiber Splits Along Kansas City's Digital Divide

Two days before the deadline to get neighborhoods signed up, Google's effort to bring ultra-high-speed internet to a major American city could end up reinforcing the digital divide. When Google Fiber launched last month, the announcement of the service came with the caveat that to get the super-fast 1 gigabit broadband hookups, neighborhoods would have to pre-register a certain percentage of households for the service. The deadline for pre-registrations is Sunday at midnight.

10 episodes that find the ’60s Batman at its campy best

TV: TV Club 10: 10 episodes that find the ’60s Batman at its campy best



There are two ways to look at the ’60s television series incarnation of Batman: as a successful attempt to turn dark material into lighter fare, or as a gaudy and shallow mess that sullies the serious reputation of an iconic character. From a modern perspective—and with the three super-serious Christopher Nolan films fresh in the mind—it is difficult to view the series objectively.
Series producer William Dozier supposedly hated comic books, so his approach was to turn Batman into a campy comedy, with oversized villain performances, outlandish gadgetry, and two playful lead performances from Adam West as Bruce Wayne and Burt Ward as Dick Grayson, his young ward. The bright and breezy attitude of the show is antithetical to the Nolan films, which lash out with great but murky purpose. Those films are spectacular, but they are by no means definitive, and the ’60s television series embodies an ...

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